Market overview

As the complexity of systems increases, costs and time associated with the creation, certification and deployment of mission critical electronics expand. The best path is to harness mixed criticality systems, partitioning the system in a way where the amount of code that needs to be certified is minimized, isolated from other applications, and proven to operate in the intended deterministic, real-time way.

Product overview

LYNX MOSA.ic for Avionics is a set of Lynx software packages, 3^rd party technologies, and associated tools which Lynx has proven to reliably work together for rapidly building robust avionics systems. Specifically, LYNX MOSA.ic for Avionics includes the following: 

• LynxOS-178^® (Safety RTOS)
• Buildroot (Linux)
• LynxSecure (Separation kernel)
• Lynx Simple Applications (bare-metal apps)
• Certification evidence
• Tools

Component details

• LynxOS-178 (Safety RTOS) — LynxOS-178 is a native POSIX^®, hard real-time partitioning operating system developed and certified to FAA DO-178B/C DAL A safety standards. It has been awarded a Reusable Software Component (RSC) certificate from the FAA for re-usability in DO-178B/C certification projects. LynxOS-178 is the primary host for real-time POSIX and FACE™ applications within the LYNX MOSA.ic™ development and integration framework. LynxOS-178 native POSIX implementation satisfies the PSE 53/54 profiles for both dedicated and multi-purpose real-time as well as FACE applications.
• Linux (Buildroot) — Buildroot is a simple, efficient, and easy-to-use tool to generate embedded Linux systems through cross-compilation. Its kernel-like menuconfig, gconfig and xconfig configuration interfaces make building a basic system with Buildroot easy, typically taking between 15-30 minutes.
• LynxSecure^® (Separation Kernel Hypervisor) — LynxSecure is a separation kernel which provides isolated environments in which multiple safety critical and general purpose operating systems can perform simultaneously without compromising safety, security, reliability or data integrity. LynxSecure offers both time-space partitioning and was designed from the ground up to be small, real-time, and safety and security certifiable.
• Lynx Simple Applications (LSAs) — LSAs are true bare-metal applications, each running directly on hardware without any underlying operating system components. When needing to meet the strict timing requirements of complex and safety-critical systems, Lynx Advanced Scheduling can be used to precisely control the execution and timing of the LSA components in the system. Communications interconnects provide security-policy enforced, zero copy, fast and low latency communications between critical functions hosted on LSAs and guest operating systems. Any LSA or guest OS can be securely connected with any other LSA or guest to efficiently move data through the processing pipeline.
• Certification Evidence — For many years, Lynx has certified its products within safety critical, military, and commercial aviation systems to DO-178C DAL A and other standards. We provide artifacts and support to our customers who are going through various industry specific certifications (including DO-178) in configurations ranging from a stand-alone LynxOS-178 RTOS to multi-OS configurations running on LynxSecure and consisting of LSA, Linux, LynxOS-178, and 3rd party RTOSes.
• Tools — Lynx tools support LynxOS-178 RTOS, Linux, LSA, and LynxSecure across fundamental tasks including application development, debug, trace and visualization. Luminosity, SpyKer and TraceCompass are Eclipse based environments that allow intuitive build and debug of applications and drivers, event trace and visualization for LynxOS-178 and Linux guests. For LynxSecure users, the CDK includes tools to define and create system configurations, generate the human-readable and binary configuration files, and to build the boot images and files.

A LYNX MOSA.ic product

LYNX MOSA.ic was announced as a software framework in 2019. It is founded on the LynxSecure^® separation kernel hypervisor and enables a number of other Lynx products and third-party products to be combined in a way where applications are given fine grained control over specific CPU and memory resources. In contrast to traditional RTOS platforms, where hardware control, real-time scheduling, security, multimedia, and application runtime services are integrated into a common stack servicing all applications on all CPU cores, LYNX MOSA.ic allows system architects to subdivide systems into smaller, independent stacks which include only the dependencies required. Lynx has used this framework to create specific products for specific applications.

LYNX MOSA.ic for Avionics includes a native POSIX DO-178 certified RTOS, certification artifacts, Linux (Buildroot), bare metal applications such as Lynx Simple Applications (LSAs), and a rich set of tools. 

Founded on LynxSecure

As a true separation kernel, LynxSecure is often defined by what it isn't, as much as by what it is. With LynxSecure there is no system configuration change after startup. This means no hardware re-mapping, device assignment, memory allocation, or changes to security or scheduling policies. With LynxSecure, the system architect can rely on the following facts:

• Guest software CPU cycles are guaranteed
• LynxSecure executable is secure
  • No means to load any app. or modify the LynxSecure executable
  • Guests cannot access LynxSecure memory
  • No shared kernel memory between guests and/or LynxSecure
• Guest-to-Guest communications are secure
  • Resources and security policies defined at boot
  • User-space, zero copy memory for security-policy enforced guest-guest communications
  • Data does not pass through LynxSecure
• Communication (using FIFOs, Ethernet or device emulation) between guest operating systems is highly regulated
  • LynxSecure provides a protected, secure channel of communication using a message passing API
  • Message transmission is generally asynchronous and unidirectional for security concerns.
  • The security policy defines the authorized communication between two different guests and can be defined as unidirectional or bi-directional